January 24, 2015

PAX South is going on right now, and one of the new heroes I created for our game Gigantic was revealed!

There's a bit of cat, rabbit, and monkey in her design

She’s a wannabe wizard that doesn’t really realize the amount of
firepower she wields! Her official bio line from our site: “Mozo amassed
a collection of magic wands — sometimes without the prior owners'
consent.”

So basically she’s a wand thief! hehehe.

I had a ton of fun coming up with her design. I’ll be sure to go into that process on here in a separate post.

Here's links to the other talented artists that brought her to life (so she can then subsequently kill you:
Modeled by Ted Lockwood, animated by Jo Han, and effects by Shen Spurgeon.

January 8, 2015

Another classic LOTR character I got to re-imagine for GoME was the Balrog. I tried some other demon designs, keeping in line with the look from the film version, but it's hard to do a new version of a creature that's now part of a classic scene. I think my designs kept the flavor of the original just with larger proportions better suited for the game. I told myself that this isn't THE Balrog but another of it's kind.

Please form your fingers into the
"devil horns" hand gesture when
viewing these concepts.

Final design for the Balrog summon

One of the other responsibilities I had on GoME was helping with effects concepting. I really like doing effects concepts, it's more about impact and action than design and anatomy. Though coming up with visually dynamic shapes is still "designing", but its' different than something like armor or weapon concepting. The concepts can be looser since they're just there to give the effects artists and animators a jumping off point.

Bright and celestial effects for Gandalf and Galadriel.

Weird, unnerving Gollum effects.

Elemental Agandaur and Lugbol effects.

Spooky Barrow Wight effects.

Finally here's a collection of sketches that just didn't make the cut. Most of the characters in GoME are from the films or the LOTR books. I came up with some other fun characters but they didn't really get past the sketch stage!

I will never tire of sticking arrows into characters.

I hope you all aren't sick of Orcs, Dwarves and Elves just yet.... I have TONS of work for Shadows of Mordor to post in the future!

January 6, 2015

I took my sweet time and finally added a bunch of the work I did on Guardians of Middle Earth (from here on in, referred to as "GoME") to my website. Figure I'll feature a few concepts here and on my tumblr over the next few posts. I worked on GoME for a bit in between a cancelled Batman project and Shadows of Mordor.

It was an interesting project to work on, as I'd never worked on a "MOBA" before (multiplayer online battle arena for you non-gamers out there), but as with all official LOTR stuff there are restrictions to what you can come up with. All of the characters were already designed from the films for the most part, we just had to "puff up" their proportions and colors a bit so they were more readable in very chaotic action, and from an isometric camera angle.

Overall the work I did on GoME was a tiny step towards what I'm doing now on Gigantic, boiling characters down to simple elements for a clean and dynamic visual read. The biggest difference though is that LOTR is still a realistically depicted world, whereas Gigantic is a fully stylized world.

First off... one of my favorite characters from LOTR, Gandalf the Grey! He really lives up to his name since he was literally a grey blob until I suggested giving him a non-canonical potion vial, add some other colors to his robes and really emphasize that impressive beard! (though in the final game he's still pretty much a grey blob)

Please say "Gandalf" in the whiniest Frodo voice when you look at this image.

Another fun character I got to work on was Treebeard. I had to use the film version as a jumping off point. (which was fine because he was great looking in the movie) I was happy with some of those head designs. I can draw organic tree people all day...

Did we really need extended Treebeard scenes in the movies? SNOOOZE.

Canis and Rem were two original characters for the game. They never made the final cut but they were really fun to work on. They're "skinchangers" like Beorn. These two siblings turn into wolves, rather than bears.

This guy doesn't care about stupid "no shirt, no shoes, no service" rules.

It was fun to keep some of the design elements from the human form in the beast form.

I referenced native dress of Turkey and of the Roma people for her costume.

I wanted to be sure Rem's beast form looked more intelligent than her brother's.

More trees! Here's some stuff for the Ents that you can summon in the game.

It was fun coming up with different forms for the Ents. The team really like #4's
root legs.